“Can I drive the car?” @reconstructs [ carrie & bruce ]
Bruce blinks twice---and then outright laughs, a chuckle like a cat’s desperate purr, deep in his belly, that spreads outwards, vibrating his vocal chords as they strain and chug slow to a whistle-out un-bristling, kinetic, like a train pulling out of a station. It feels like a lawn-mower starting, the yank of the chain, his breath pulled from him as if his heart is stopping, stopping & starting all over again.
He never thought he’d be the same after Jason.
He couldn’t be Batman, after Jason.
And so his life was over, in every way that counted.
And yet that promise to his parents from all those years ago---the meaning of his life being them and their deaths and stopping their infinite pain & suffering spanning universes & destinies and time itself----never left him. It merely mounted itself further on his shoulders and deep into his brain, the vulture with its mouth and gullet gurgling down mind & imprinting its claws into the heavy, sweating, bloating meat of his ill-practiced shoulders.
Carrie Kelley is a nest-warm, fresh egg he can hold in his hands---in the night he notices them blue as its shell reflecting the moon through the stink of the city’s smog. They’re no Dick Grayson. Not even a Jason in his prime. They’re different. And yet--with that yank of breath & mirth from a life & a destiny beyond his own pain---something blossoms. They pull that warmth out of him, across universes. They force him to grow again. To smile again. To live again. And he is given his purpose through his partner. To keep going.
“You’ll have to,” he admits. “Eventually.” The Sons of Batman will need a leader when he’s gone. And he won’t live forever. So much lost time---waiting for a kid like Carrie to save his life all over again. Now at his back is no vulture--no eagle or pigeon wasting away at his gut every morning, only for the promises and the ghosts to re-grow overnight. But a Robin, chirping in harmony, appeasing the senses, washing away the nightmares, his own fears and self-doubt---with hope & song. New promises, promises. Can you hold them close without breaking them this time? Can you make sure they don’t crack? I don’t know, I don’t know. But they keep me together, too. What came first? The chicken or the egg? (Coward.) Batman or Robin? Never or, never or, always and. An evolution in synchronocity---a dynamic duo. Broken Child & Broken Father.
“But we’ll get you your own car soon.”
